Brownies and the Krauts

I was surprised to learn from reading this N.Y. Times article that the brownie has made its way to Germany. According to the article's writer, Anna Winger:

. . . [My friend Cynthia] has a popular American bakery in Kreuzberg and is widely credited for bringing Der Brauny to the city. Virtually no one was baking brownies when the wall came down, and now they’re everywhere.

She often complains about the German competition: too soft, too dry, too sweet and undercooked. The frustrating thing about serving brownies to Germans, she says, is that they insist on eating them with a fork.

. . . [In the year 2006] my friend Patti from St. Louis opened a cafe across town (in Berlin). Patti was baking brownies, too, and so inevitably, in a city with about 13,000 American inhabitants, people made comparisons.

Which one was better, and more important, which one most authentically American? “Cynthia paved the way,” Patti told me. “I’ll give her that. But mine are better.” Cynthia just said, “Patti who?”

. . . It seems to me that there is room for two good brownies in a city of nearly three and a half million Germans who are just going to eat them with a fork.